The Master’s programme in World Arts and Music offers insight into Western and non-Western traditions of music, art, and literature, studying them from perspectives such as globalisation, intercultural and transcultural studies, and cultural anthropology. At the end of the degree, students are able to apply theories and methods of cultural studies – like techniques of field work and interviewing, and skills in the digital analysis of music, image, and text – in a range of professional occupations (including arts journalism and management, cultural politics, or intercultural music, arts, and theatre pedagogy).
African art music, shadow puppetry in Bali, heavy metal in Indonesia, modern art in Egypt, migrant theatre in Western Europe, Bhangra pop in Great Britain, and painting in Argentina – all these diverse forms of artistic expression, and many more, fall under the label ‘World Arts and Music’. Transcending the established, predominantly Western canon, World Arts and Music views any kind of cultural expression from across the globe within its individual context. The programme pays particular attention to popular, traditional, and non-Western art forms which are side-lined in the West, scrutinising artistic expressions and their medial dissemination within the overarching framework of cultural studies. As a matter of course, such analyses include sociological, political, economic, and historiographical considerations, questioning and aiming beyond the established boundaries between individual disciplines.
